“We shed light on the quality of Bolton already in the past, and we do not hide our feelings of repugnance towards him,” said Kim Kye Gwan, North Korea’s vice minister of foreign affairs. “We are no longer interested in a negotiation that will be all about driving us into a corner and making a one-sided demand for us to give up our nukes and this would force us to reconsider whether we would accept the North Korea-U.S. summit meeting.”

Bolton has a long history of calling for both regime change and a U.S. first strike on North Korea, warmongering that led Pyongyang to call him a “bloodsucker” when he was U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.

As the Washington Post‘s Anna Fifield notes, South Korean lawmakers and officials also “know the current American national security adviser’s background all too well.”

“Many served under pro-engagement president Roh Moo-hyun, at a time when Bolton was a strong proponent inside the George W. Bush administration of the invasion of Iraq and of regime change in North Korea,” Fifield adds. “After meetings with top officials [in Seoul] last week, one American analyst remarked—only half in jest—that the South Koreans detested Bolton as much as the North Koreans.”

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